On 31 October () 1923 Melbourne was rocked by riots and looting lasting 3 days. Trams were overturned, three people died, 78 stores looted, and a third of Victoria’s police was discharged. Here are the barricade’s protecting buildings on Collins Street. A #thread #AusLaw

On Wednesday night, 31 October, 1923 and on the eve of Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival Victoria Police went on strike, initially with 29 constables refusing duty. At the time, VicPol was understaffed and poorly paid and had no pension, the cops had had enough.

The Victorian government sent special supervisors in plain clothes to secretly monitor police and haunt them as they went about their duties and this was the final straw. Just before 10pm when the night shit was to begin they refused duty until the supervisors were withdrawn.

The Commissioner of Police summoned 100 other cops to take over night shift but when they arrived they joined the strike instead. The next morning this was the headline in the paper: "Police On Strike: Swift Blow Left City Unprotected".

Two days later hundreds more police were on strike leaving only the smallest of contingent of cops patrolling Melbourne, retired police were recalled to help. On police picket lines in the centre of the city, strikers taunted cops still on duty as "scabs".

At the corner of Swanston and Bourke Streets, one of the scabs was directing traffic when he became surrounded by hundreds of angry people, so he fled into a shop. When reinforcements arrived to help him the mob turned on them too and chased them into Town Hall.

By midnight the scabs had managed to control the city again, the day after crowds of people rolled in to the city because it was Derby Day. Things were about to get ugly.

With most police still on strike, at Town Hall, clerks enrolled anyone off the street who wanted to be a cop and gave them special armbands. Tada, they were cops now. Here’s a pic of them lining up to volunteer as “Special Constables” note their armbands.

By the afternoon of Derby Day tensions broke when someone charged a scab and the police charged back smashing people with batons. Police retreated and left the city to the mob. Terrible timing too as city pubs closed at 6pm and now drunk patrons were joining the crowd.

Things went wild. People started throwing bottles, bricks, glass, metal, rocks, sticks, whatever they could. There were people bleeding and wounded everywhere in the streets. It was estimated there were now 12,000 rioting in Melbourne.

Some drunk sailors coming in from the Port of Melbourne tried to control the crowd by swinging metal boot stands at the crowd to hold them back, they failed. Looters broke in to the Leviathan department store to take whatever they could grab. It was all stolen.

Other shops were targeted all over the city, tobacconists being particularly popular. One looter almost had his hand severed by glass as he reached in to take what wasn’t his. Some of the special constables tried to bring order by smashing anyone they could with batons.

The government requested that men in the theatres and picture shows in the city volunteer immediately to become Special Constables. At Hoyts Pictures 200 people agreed. Police fired shots above the crowd which just caused a stampede and made everything worse.

By 9:30 pm the government had enlisted hundreds of Special Constables (here they are patrolling Little Collins St) calmed the rioting. Sadly a Mr William Spain a railway worker was attacked on City Road and beaten with a beer bottle and robbed, he died in a rookery.

When the dust had settled, there were 78 city shops looted, over $5,000,000 in damages (in today figures), 400 injuries, 55 arrests, and at least three deaths. The following day 100,000 people came to gawk at the mess fuelling fears of another day of rioting.

Defence personnel leave was cancelled and all men had to report to their bases. Soldiers arrived at Flinders Street armed with bayonets and live ammunition, the machine guns at Victoria Barracks on St Kilda Road were readied. Crowds began gathering again for more rioting.

Even though there were some small bursts of violence and rioting by this time there were 2,000 police, mostly Special Constables and they quashed the remaining violence. Did you know this happened? No? That’s for a reason, the government wanted this forgotten.

The federal government banned any export of the newsreels of what had happened in Melbourne so that no one would see the anarchy in the streets. Not one of the 636 police strikers got their jobs back even though largely they got what they were striking for.

The Special Constables would remain on duty.
Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12177894 https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/flashback-1923-police-strike-melbourne-descends-into-anarchy-20181031-p50d58.html